Debit cards lag credit cards in EMV migration, putting banks at risk

Maria Korolov |
Sept. 23, 2015

Three times as many credit cards will be chip-enabled by the end of the year as debit cards.

The chip alone isn't a silver bullet, she added. Merchants should also use tokenization and end-to-end encryption to fully protect the payment information as it travels from the physical payment terminals all the way to the issuers.

Judging by the experience of other countries, once everyone upgrades, the criminals move to the online channel, and to cross-border transactions, she said.

The move to chip-based cards, also known as EMV for Europay Mastercard Visa, is scheduled to happen next month, but the cybercriminals aren't likely to react overnight.

"It's going to be gradual," she said. "It's not like a switch flips on October 1 and the world ends."